On the Yukon River

Karen had asked me if I would like to go for a paddle on the Yukon River on Monday evening. I said yes, so she started a round of phone calls to various friends in order to make a decent sized party. Also, this would allow a "two car" paddle though we could have done it with her Subaru and my Ford Focus.

 I set off to spend the day in downtown Whitehorse. I was approaching the intersection with the Alaska Highway when a coyote ambled across the road.

It stared at me then sauntered off.

In Whitehorse, I parked the car at one end of the River Front and moseyed along taking in the sights. One important stop was at the Kwanlin Dün Cultural Centre. The Kwanlin Dün are the First Nation on whose land Whitehorse sits. If I understand correctly, it was built using funds provided by the Umbrella Final Agreement signed in 1992 between various First Nations in the Yukon and various levels of government from the Federal on down. Partly because of Canada 150, it was hosting the building of four boats built in four different traditional styles. These were dugout, birch bark canoe, kayak and moosehide boat. The latter, I would argue, is the least well known of the four, yet is actually quite simple. The construction technique is to build a wooden frame work and cover it with moosehides sewn together and sealed with pine tar. This is very like the Irish curraghs that St-Brendan and cohorts may have used to cross the Atlantic back before the Norse.

 There was an already mostly completed dugout in the lobby of the Centre which a carver was using to plan his next move on the sternpost at least for the sake of a cameraman making a documentary. I gather the woodcarver might have been Maori.

 The boats were being built outside the Centre as the processes are somewhat messy. Note the wood shavings above. Some of the processes are also smelly, not just the smell of freshly carved confiers but also that of raw moosehide. One man was carefully scraping a wet moose hide on a stand to reduce the skin to the desired thickness. It was a smelly business.

 Somewhere in town, I came across an adventure touring motorcycle from El Salvador of all places!

I visited the McBride Museum where I saw a pair of stuffed moose, one of them was an albino! Among the stuffed animals was a muskrat. As I was looked at its mingy tail, I realised that I now knew what animal I had seen on my first big bike trip in Canada.  As the animal some nine years earlier had a substantial tail, it must have been an otter!!! Much more fun than a muskrat.

 I also saw the famous Log Skyscraper.

 I also got on the Klondike II paddle steamer. Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed on the upper decks.

 At the Beringia Centre, I learned about the environment in the Yukon back some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago when man hunted mammals such as mammoths and giant beavers in these parts. I got to try out an atl-atl, a device for hurling spears with greater force. I was surprised at how small the spears were. The target range was inhabitated by rabbits and arctic ground squirrels who weren't terribly worried.

I returned to Karen's at around 5 PM, to get ready for our paddle. She had rounded up a couple of friends at one of whom's house we were to assemble. I don't remember her name, but she lived further out from Whitehorse on a property that had a large dog run as well as a population of domestic fowl (chickens and geese) that had the run of the lawn.

A little before we left, I was asked to help corral the fowl into their pen. With the help of Karen's other friend (male), we got the birds into their home. There was a question as to whether we had got them all, but it seems we did.

 We drove up the Yukon River a certain distance before stopping to stash Karen's Subaru at the end location and driving further upstream to where we got Karen canoe and the kayaks of the other two off the roof of the truck. Then it was a case of "off like a herd of tortoises" as we loaded bits of gear and supper into our watercrafts. It was only during this process that Karen asked me if I knew anything about canoeing!  Thankfully I did, though I ceded her the rear seat.

So off we went down the Yukon. Unlike the powerful river I had seen at Whitehorse, the section Karen had chosen had only barely noticeable current. We paddled past the lodges of bank beavers and saw several of their inhabitants. Karen's friends, like her, were employed by various branches of the Yukon Government's natural resources department, ministry or whatever it is called. They were not in the "mining" department but rather the "anti-mining" departments intent on preserving the land, wildlife, water, etc., and thus might be considered in the left-wing of the government, or possibly just the "sensible" part of the administration. They rather resented what they perceived as the "excessive" rights of gold miners to dig up a claim and leave nought but tailings and ponds, particularly as the royalties seem to have not been increased since the early 1900s and stand at the munificent sum of approximately 70 cents per ounce.  That is 70 cents, not 70 dollars or 70 percent. It seems ridiculous to me.

Around nine o'clock, we stopped and tied the kayaks alongside the canoe for some underway replenishment, i.e. supper. This consisted of a baroque combination of whatever everyone had brought. I don't remember what everything was, but it did include cold black been chili in a flour tortilla with fresh spinach, beer brewed in the Yukon and curried munchies!

Oh, and sushi. This last one struck me as a comment on the evolution of society as I had seen and read a lot about the building of the Alaska Highway in the McBride Museum. I wondered aloud what those men and women would have thought of us eating such very Japanese food!

 I must confess, I got a little lost in their shop talk about what they were doing in this or that bit of the Yukon, particularly as I hadn't put up a map of the Yukon on my wall at home prior to leaving in order to get acquainted with the geography.

 It says something about Yukoners that they thought little of having a long evening canoe trip on a weekday. Thankfully, the rain held off until we were off the river and were busy loading the vehicles. Also, we got a nice rainbow out of it.

On getting to the Yukon

This entry unfortunately does not deal with me cycle touring. It does touch on the subject.

I am currently in the Yukon. The genesis for this trip began some time after my trip to Australia as that trip earned me a wodge of Aéroplan points allowing me a long haul domestic flight. I am in a well populated group of Southerners who use their points to visit the North.

So where to go? Well, Whitehorse seemed more interesting than Yellowknife as there was the possibility of a loop via Kluane National Park, Haines (Alaska), ferry to Skagway, then over the White Pass and back to Whitehorse via Carcross. This was an idea that I thought about and filed away for future reference.

Last year, I was struck by the thought, "Hey, next year will be Canada 150. Why not cross Canada in one go?" (Or at least Vancouver to Halifax.) I thought that this would be more interesting if I had company so I asked Margo and Chris if they would be interested. Margo thought it sounded a bit too ordinary. Why not cross Canada on a North-South axis? This led to an investigation regarding the Dempster Highway and take a boat on the Mackenzie River. Ultimately, these discussions led nowhere as Margo and Chris decided to commit to trip in Central America which might have led to South America but didn't in the end. I didn't want to do such trip without their expertise at camping and dealing with bears. (The trip would pass through known stomping grounds of all three bears species known to inhabit North America.) Instead, I made plans for my main vacation this summer to be St John's to Halifax and to go to Whitehorse as a "common" tourist.

I left Montreal on a Saturday evening flight on St-Jean Baptiste Day, a.k.a. the official start of summer in Quebec. Consequently, Trudeau was quite busy with a lot of Air Transat (a charter airline) planes in evidence. As I had supper in the Desjardins Lounge in the airport, I looked out at the assortment of planes taxiing to and fro. I was struck by the sight of an Air Inuit first generation 737 equipped with a gravel kit (see above) followed by a First Air second generation 737 outfitted as a combi with a large main deck cargo door in front (see below).  Later an Air Algérie Airbus 330 came in. While, I was taxiing out in an Air Canada 787,  I saw a planes from Tunisair and Royal Air Maroc. The juxtaposition of airlines serving Northern Canada with North African airlines was interesting.

My trip required me to overnight in Vancouver. Thankfully, Margo and Chris were kind enough (and available) to not only give me a bed for the night but also pick me up at the airport. I am afraid I repaid her badly by guessing both bits of her "exciting" news. The first was that her daughter Louise is pregnant. (She had tipped her hand by saying she had exciting news when I spoke to her on the phone from Montreal giving me several hours to guess.)  Her second bit of exciting news that I guessed was that she and Chris had bought themselves road bikes. She had previously mentioned they were think about doing so.

After landing, I checked my email on my trusty iPhone. I was startled to see that Air Canada had cancelled my flight to Whitehorse and put me on another flight. However, the time of the new flight was exactly the same! I checked with a member of Air Canada's ground staff while waiting for my bag. She said the flight number had been changed as the equipment (i.e. the aircraft) had been changed. I later found out that the last flight out of Vancouver to Whitehorse had been cancelled that evening. In order to transport the doubled passenger load on the morning flight, Air Canada had substituted an Airbus 320 for the scheduled Bombardier Regional Jet. As the Regional Jet is technically operated by Air Canada Express and not Air Canada proper, and the Airbus by Air Canada proper, they had to change the flight number.

While waiting to board the next morning, I was asked to go to the counter over the loudspeaker. I went up and was asked to change seats so that a mother and child could sit together. Given recent airline nonsense and the fact that it made very little difference (seat 13C instead of 12C) I said "Sure, no problem." In fact, 13C was actually a bit better for me being one seat back from the cabin divider between first and cattle classes and thus less claustrophobic.

The plane was pushed back from the gate and then stopped. After a bit, there was an announcement from the pilot saying the baggage handlers had goofed and loaded our luggage into lower deck containers which Whitehorse's airport didn't have the facilities for! There was a slightly hysterical laugh from the passengers. So the plane was pulled back to the gate so the containers could be unloaded from the plane and their contents loaded directly into the hold, which of course took time.

The flight itself was unremarkable, though the scenery I glimpsed through the window was impressive as we came into the Erik Nielsen Airport, named for the former Mulroney era cabinet minister and brother of Leslie Nielsen. He was also the MP for Whitehorse.

I collected my rental car, nabbed a free map or two and collected my bag. Margo had put me in touch with her friend Karen who offered me a bed and more. Her house is in what passes for a subdivision in Whitehorse. Its streets were named  with a geological/glaciological theme with names such as Cirque, Morraine and Esker. The lots are huge by my standards, and I am talking huge for North Hatley, not just Montreal! Unfortunately, the lots were not well numbered so I had to ask for directions!

I was greeted by Karen and her daughter Kendra and two huskies, Afry (short for Aphrodite) and Cyrus (pronounced "Cirrus" and is a female and less than a year old.) I was shown to my room. I napped for a bit before there was a dog walk in the woods behind the house. As I understand it, Afry and Cyrus are essentially "pet" huskies and so are comparatively spoilt compared to "true" sled dog huskies. This is not a dig at the latter or their owners but a reflection of the realities of dealing a dozen or more big dogs.

That evening Karen gave me lots of information about what to do in Whitehorse and on the road to Dawson City. As well, she invited me to go canoeing on the Yukon River the following evening.

On my first Challenge of the year

I sat out the first of Vélo-Québec's 3 Challenges this year on account of a sore ankle. I am not sure what I did, but I think a pulled a tendon or something at the gym on the Wednesday before the Metropolitan Challenge and so I was in a certain amount of discomfort vis-à-vis my right ankle for a few days to the point of popping into a nearby clinic to get a medical opinion. Unfortunately, all the nurse could say was that there wasn't anything obviously wrong. So I opted out on the grounds of prudence.

Naturally, the pain went away on the day of the Challenge and I wasn't in a position to take advantage of the relief. This was the weekend before the Tour de l'Île.

Last Saturday was the Mauricie Challenge. I drove up in a rented car to Trois-Rivières to meet the Parents and their friend Annie S. (not Fil's old girlfriend Annie B.) at the Trois-Rivières youth hostel where Annie had booked us a room for four.  The next morning, after a breakfast of spinach and onion omelets with Mummy's homemade toast and coffee, we set off to the start the other side of the Saint-Maurice River in Cap-de-la-Madelaine.

It had rained the night before, but day turned out fairly nice.  Quite cool and mostly dry with little wind. It was fairly cloudy most of the day with sunny breaks which increased with afternoon. After the obligatory "cheese de groupe au départ", we set off like a herd of tortoises to borrow a phrase from my sister. This refers to any start that happens in bits and drabs and takes longer than expected. I am afraid I was the last to leave owing to a pre-departure pit stop.

I fell in behind a group of cyclist going at a fair, but slightly too slow, clip for a dozen or so kilometers before they slackened their pace for a bit which led me to overtake them. This resulted in me pushing myself a bit too much for my first real jaunt on Leonardo this year which meant I had soreness in my legs by the time I overtook Mummy on her new road bike. I slacked off the pace and let her draft behind me, allowing her to exploit my size and relative youth. This ties into one of Margo's sayings, namely: "Large nephews make good windbreaks."

I used the opportunity to take a selfie over my shoulder. Mummy was impressed at my skill. Apparently, she has yet to master the ability to shift gears and pedal at the same time. I would have thought she was better at multi-tasking than that. I was feeling a shade out of shape so I kept to the basic 100 km course, the same distance as my parents and Annie did. I can say that I averaged a higher speed, but then I stopped a bit more than they did meaning that we kept leapfrogging each other, and arrived at lunch at about the same time.

After lunch, I passed this business which evidently believed in the pre-literacy school of signs, and thus the backhoe sticking from the wall and the large hammer. ;-)

My Father has a somewhat aesthetic taste in bike clothing and tends to make snarky comments about the logo laden spandex-type cyclists. He something of hypocrite in this as he is notorious for mixing and (mis)-matching various bits of active wear.  One of his more outlandish hiking outfits is a pair of genuine leather lederhosen (minus the suspenders), with a random t-shirt and South American fedora hat which he pushed the crown out of.  So for the Défi, he chose to actually wear bike shorts, in which he tucked in (a definite faux-pas in and of itself) a red t-shirt, and wore a red and white helmet under which he wore a bright yellow skull cap which I had bought him so that he might have a second one to go with the red one (which I also had bought him).  Would it have been too difficult to coordinate by wearing the red cap?

The Parents arrive ten or so minutes after Annie and I. We sat at a table in the shade and drank chocolate milk and iced tea.  I offered to go to the bar tent for beer which Pappy accepted. Annie and Mummy demurred though the latter then helped herself to sips prompting the punchline of a family joke "Oh no, you don't! You'll have 'arf a pint like the rest of us!"

While we were loafing around, Mummy made unfortunate comments about a rather plump, middle aged woman who crossed the finished line.  I pointed out that by the colour of her bracelet (light blue such as Pappy and Mummy are wearing in the above photo) I could tell she had done at least 80 some odd kilometers, and from the time she arrived, I suspected she had done at least 100. As well, she didn't look knackered (as in "Oh God, I don't wanted to go another step. Some please catch me.") Furthermore, the important thing was that she was out on her bike.

To be honest, I was feeling a trifle defensive as I feel I am too thick around the middle these days.

On clueless prizes

Apart from one incident, this year's Tour de l'Île went very well up until Vélo-Québec awarded me a prize.

The day had been forecast as unfavourable with cloudy skies, cool and with a chance of rain for much of the week. However, the forecast got better on Saturday and in the event the weather was near perfect. Sunny yet cool (high of 21). Indeed, I made the mistake of heading to the event in long trousers. I was again a volunteer mobile bike mechanic. Again like last year, I left my place early for the Chalet in Lafontaine park to pick up my Bénévélo kit and that of my friend J.-P..  There was a sign on the outside wall saying beware of the mother duck.  Low and behold, there was indeed a mother mallard who had made a nest in one of the big planters next to the wall. She was keeping a close eye on anyone who came close to her. A pair of ducklings poked their fluffy heads out from under her and I had the impression that there were more under her.

 After picking up the kits, I headed over to J.-P.'s for breakfast. His family has grown by one since last year. Chloé is now a big sister to Estelle who is just starting to locomote. Both very cute. After breakfast, J.-P. and I headed to the start to await our orders to roll and to seek out people who needed their tires inflated. Our team was in fact sought out by a woman who had found a young girl who had lost her mother. J.-P. and a couple of policemen looked after her.

The one seriously untoward incident came when Montreal's fat and evil slob of a mayor got on the public address system and made a blatantly vote seeking speech which touched on his needlessly expensive Montreal 375 party which he implicitly contrasted with the previous night's terrorist attack in London and made empty promises about bike paths. (This, by the way, is the first time I have heard a mayor speak at the Tour de l'Île.)  I would have thrown a mushy banana at him, but pity stayed my hand: it was a pity I wasn't near enough to see where he was.

 

After a while, J.-P. and I set off, but a few blocks later, we stopped to greet Marie-France, daughters and Felix, his nephew. The latter had been put in charge of pulling the elder daughter in the Tour in a trailer! What with one thing and another, J.-P. and I were separated before we left Parc Avenue. My services were called for in order to help someone with a flat tire and possible seat-handlebar interface problems which would be tedious to related but not so tedious as to endure, to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams. The one good thing was that I got to say "Shalom" to passing Hasidic Jews who pointedly ignored me.

The Tour de l'Île generates an amount of surprising and potentially dangerous litter. I make it a point to pick up as much of it as I can. This year, I picked up one full biking water bottle, two Gatorade bottles (one full and one empty), a velcro LED visibility strap, a pair of biking gloves (whose owner I found) and a new inner tube, still in its box (size 700x35-42 Schrader valve).

My observation is that people who are participating in the Tour are either trending towards the better equipped or are opting for Bixis. The former require less intervention from Bénévélos and the latter are of less concern as if something goes wrong we can't really help them given the way Bixis are designed. All this to say that I didn't have whole lot of business from cyclists. Discounting inflating tires at the start, I would say that I escorted more "civillians" across the road than I helped cyclists!

Once back at Fletcher's Field, I found the volunteers' tent where I enquired where I was to return my unused inner tubes. One of my fellow volunteers told me it had been cunningly located at the opposite corner of the field. I went over and dropped off my unused inner tubes as well as the one I had found as I have no use for  Schrader valved inner tube.

Around lunchtime today, I got a "Thank you" e-mail from Vélo-Québec which reminded volunteers that there was a "happy, jolly" thank you party this evening and that the following volunteers had won a prize. I was surprised to see my name on list and J.-P.s!  The party was to be held at the Musée Grévin. So I headed there after work.  My path was blocked by the f***ing street party on Crescent street for the f***ing F1.

The Musée Grévin is, in essence, a Québécois knock-off of Madame Tussaud's. It is located in a former movie theatre in the Eaton's Centre in former years I saw such movies as Cutthroat Island and Interview with a Vampire. As you start the tour, you first confronted with number of Québécois celebrities, before encountering people most non-Québécois are likely to have heard of. The effect is really rather cheesy. One room was laid out like the shower from Psycho with Alfred Hitchcock sitting down and reading a script. However, if you looked behind the curtain, there was no Janet Leigh, nor even a bottle of chocolate syrup! Also, the accuracy of at least one of historical figures was farcical: depicting General Wolfe with a musket on his back is monumentally wrong.

That didn't stop me from taking a few selfies.

I was surprised at how tall he was.

I was also surprised that they didn't have one of his son.

I would have loved to have taken a selfie with her husband.

After making my way through the maze, I came the table where I could claim my prize.  Oh joy.  Oh rapture.  A year's free Bixi usage.

Do the clowns at Vélo-Québec even try to think these things through? I mean, chances are a "bénévélo" is bound to already own a bicycle. And those that do and who happen to use Bixis (all three of them) have probably already yearly passes. To boot, this "prize" is only really useful to those who live in the Bixi area and those who live further away from downtown would might view it as a pretty empty prize. Then you have the not insignificant percentage of the population who view Bixis as a poorly thought out waste of taxpayer's money and a serious drain on the biking budget.

Sorry Vélo-Québec, while the Tour de l'Île might be better than the Five Boroughs, a prize of "free" Bixi usage is not a suitable thank you gift. It is an insult.

More on European cyclists

At the last minute, Johan was invited to my parents' new year's eve dinner party which I not only attended but also but also cooked for. I took the opportunity to get my facts straight about the Opa who had borrowed Johan's bicycle back in the 1980s. He was in fact Johan's father. (I could easily go back and change my previous guess that it was Pauline's father, but the entry is no weaker for this error. I did change the spelling of Johan from the German "Johann" to the Dutch "Johan".) This inquiry led to a discussion of the fact that Johan's father had never learned to drive and therefore had used a bike. This very much falls into the current North American cyclist's view of Dutch cyclists.

More on Pauline and Johan

Rereading my previous post, I realized I had forgotten about some important bits, especially as relates to biking. I hadn't been particularly close to Pauline, more or less because their kids weren't my age. So it was a revelation when Johan gave a very good eulogy at her memorial service in the Unitarian Church in North Hatley. (The last time I had been in that room was for Olivier's baptism!)  He told the story of how they had met, something I had never heard before.

Fate evidently intended them to be together as you could not write this as fiction. Pauline had gone on a bike trip in Scotland with a friend of hers. Johan had been hitchhiking around Britain with a friend of his. Johan and his friend needed to split up for a while but made arrangements to meet up in Killin in Scotland on such and such a day. The choice of Killin was determined by throwing a dart at a map of the UK(!) and then checking to see if there was a youth hostel nearby. There was and that was were Pauline and Johan met, Johan's friend having failed to get there. It may not have been love at first sight (though it could have been) but at the very least, Johan was attracted to Pauline sufficiently to pursue a relationship which led to what seems to me as a successful marriage, though one cut too short.

One of the things that struck me was that I more or less knew where Killin was having biked near it on not one but two bike trips in Scotland.  I have since looked it up and it lies roughly midway between Crianlarirch and Kenmore. On my first bike trip in Scotland, I rode within 5 kms of it!

Another thing that struck me was just how positive a person Johan* is and has always been in my view. It is too easy to be negative or to fall into the trap of negative statements. Lately at work, I have been often asked if such and such a minor schedule change would be acceptable. I have striven to avoid responding with "No problem" and instead have written "Fine by me". I would like to hold up Johan as an example of positivity.

So, hear's to Pauline and Johan!

* Addendum, dated 2017-10-03. In considering Johan's optimism, it must be pointed that he is old enough to have suffered through and remembers the Hunger Winter.

On European cyclists

For the second time this fall, I have hauled Floria up the stairs to my bike storage area in anticipation of snow. Who knows if the forecast snow will stick, but I getting the point where I tend towards the preemptive.

I am in the process of watching the Suzuki Diaries featuring David Suzuki and his daughter travelling around Europe by train and observing various eco-friendly features such as Copenhagen's bike culture. This made me think on an incident (possibly exaggerated) from my youth. As I was growing up, there was a Dutch family up the road with which my family was friends. (Olivier, with whom I stayed in Corner Brook, is a member of said family.)  The mother of the family, Pauline, died recently, which partly explains the "why" of this post.

At some point in the early 1980s, the one set of the family's grandparents (i.e. the grandparents' of "my" generation of the family) came over for a visit. I believe they were Pauline's parents, but I can't be sure.  In any case, the story came out that the Opa (Dutch for Grandfather) borrowed Johan's (the father) bicycle and rode downtown.  As many of my readers may know, North Hatley is in a valley and the slopes are significant. Opa zoomed down the hill to centre of the village and is said to have said: "What a wonderful country for biking!" He struggled back up the hill, whereupon he is said to have said: "Canada is no country for bikes!"  From what little I know of him, I gather he would have been saying so facetiously. In any event, the story was related to me as such.

However, on much later reflection, I am intrigued by the fact that he would have borrowed a bike in the first place. The distance between the house and downtown is less than a kilometre and easy walking distance. Yet he casually chose to bike it. Looking back, none of my grandparents would have chosen to ride a bike around North Hatley, even Granny M., who was very active and with whom I biked around Stanley Park when I was 9. (I once skied to church (in North Hatley) and back with her on a particularly snowy Christmas morning in the late 1970s.)  My point is that Opa riding the bike was, in its own way, quietly remarkable for North America in the early 1980s, but probably utterly unremarkable for the Netherlands. And yet, as a child, I didn't think it remarkable aside from the funny comment on Canadian hills coming from a Dutchman.